Rodeo!

Yippee Yo Kaiyea

Willa is feeling better now so we took the day to go to the Houston rodeo. We went with my good friend and old roommate Carol and her two kids. Thanks for the deep-fried oreo, Carol!

Willa and I wore matching outfits: cowboy boots, jeans, and cowboy shirt. Don't judge how I look, Ryan informs me that I shouldn't have tucked my jeans. By the time I get Willa fed, changed, and ready to go I usually rush out the door so that we can get going before she gets cranky, therefore I don't always look at myself in the mirror. Willa looks cute, here is a close-up. Again, I was rushing to get out the door so the photo isn't the best.

Has anyone ever seen Food Inc? It's kind of like a horror movie but about animals and farming practices in America. Lots of my friends watched it and decided to eat more "friendly" meat afterwards; we can't afford "friendly" meat, so I just look at the documentary and the farming practices as a testament to Capitalism a la Ayn Rand: capitalism is strong, let the stronger crush the weaker.

Back to the rodeo, there was a livestock show that included a fun area to teach kids about farm animals. Everything looked very clean and sweet from the rodeo. They showed a video of a little chicken pecking around outside in the grass instead of showing the dark, windowless barns where the chickens are basically living on top of each other.

This photo isn't that good but I liked how they had live turkeys, then signs about how many turkeys we eat. It seems kind of harsh at a petting zoo to explain to the kids how you eat those animals; that's farm life, I guess.

We had a great time, even though navigating around with three little kids was exhausting. I felt very brave even attempting the outing. I'd also like to have a small moment of silence for the parking and efficiency of Disneyland.

The Houston rodeo is the largest indoor rodeo in the world. They have the big rodeo events in the evening along with a concert. Tonight Rascal Flatts was playing (not that we were going) and Janet Jackson was a few nights ago. I imagine that it's kind of like a bigger Stadium of Fire. It was fun seeing all the animals, the cows were huge! They even had honeybees and worms there, though I don't think the worms were getting judged. The largest earthworm ever found was 22 feet! The worms here were just part of the kid's exhibit, they had piles of dirt the kids could search through for worms, ewww.